SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Core A ? Administration, Research Coordination, and Planning The substantial benefits of the program project grant mechanism are made possible by an administrative core that is actively engaged with the research team as a whole, both in coordinating the ongoing conduct of the individual research projects and in advancing and promoting the underlying themes and objectives of the overall program. The activities of the administrative core encompass organizational and financial management, research support, outreach, substantive integration, dissemination, planning, and research development. One role of the core is to provide centralized administrative, communications, and research support. A second is to stimulate interest in health-related research in the larger community. The core is both the integrative glue for the subprojects that make up the program project and the cornerstone for coordinating, promoting, recruiting and advancing NBER research in health economics more generally. It seeks to engage in program activities many of the best scholars at all levels of experience, from graduate students to post-docs to emerging leaders to prominent scholars. A third role is facilitating collaboration, including organizing working group meetings, workshops, and conferences that bring people together. Promoting interactions between the core research team and health care practitioners is an important additional aim of the administrative core. A fourth activity of the core is the substantive integration of findings from multiple projects. The major themes of program project research weave through most or all of the component projects, creating synergies of cross-project learning. The importance of the findings from each subproject, and how they fit together, requires intellectual attention and additional research focus that is an explicit activity and goal of the core. A fifth responsibility is research dissemination. This is done primarily through articles in peer-reviewed journals, but also through a well- established working paper series, and non-technical newsletters. The core is particularly instrumental in preparing the non-technical summaries that appear in NBER newsletters. Sixth, the core promotes dynamic research planning and development. While this application proposes a research agenda for the next five years, it is a living plan, evolving over time in response to what we learn as we progress, to new opportunities that arise, and to changes in the health, health care and health policy environment in which our research is conducted. The core pays attention to the ongoing relevance of each research plan, and seeks to identify gaps that might be filled through new research development.